


Strange Bedfellows

by appelwagon



Category: Entourage
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-01
Updated: 2011-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appelwagon/pseuds/appelwagon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vince & Eric & 10 years of sleepovers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Bedfellows

_Age 6_

Eric is a stomach sleeper. This is one of the first things Vince learns about him, right on the heels of ‘neighbor,’ ‘quiet,’ and ‘sad.’ The last one’s just a guess, but the wide blue eyes that give him a quick once-over when Vince appears on the doorstep are puffy-pink, and he doesn’t smile when Vince hands over his mom’s special new-neighbors casserole. What he does do is hesitate, hand on the door like he wants to close it and be done. But Vince flashes his biggest smile, the one he uses when he’s done something wrong but knows he’ll get away with it anyways, and the new kid – Eric – cautiously smiles back and opens the door a little wider to let him in.

Mrs. Murphy exclaims over him and the casserole and insists he stay to help eat it. Dinner leads to T.V. in the living room – bare-bones and stacked with half-empty boxes labeled things like ‘Katie’s clothes’ and ‘FRAGILE: dishes’ – and right when Vince starts to yawn, Eric looks down at his hands and says in a rush, “You can, um, stay here if you want. And if Ma doesn’t mind.”

So Vince stays, squeaky army cot propped against the side of Eric’s bed. When he wakes up near midnight, thirsty and hot, all he can see of Eric is a white ear and tufts of hair poking over the swell of the pillow. He’s so still that Vince, half-asleep and dream-fogged, thinks he’s gone, suffocated. Banging his knee on the side of the cot, he crawls onto Eric’s bed, heart knocking in his chest as he awkwardly pushes the smaller boy on his side. He’s breathing. Vince shakes his head. “It’s a good thing I was here to save you,” he mumbles, eyes already sliding shut again. Eric’s pillow is damp with drool in the warm valley his head made, but Vince is asleep before he can notice.

When Vince wakes up, Eric is back in his pillow, snoring wetly. “I’m scared of the dark,” Vince tells Mrs. Murphy over the top of Eric’s straw-colored head when she looks in moments later – only half a lie.

After that, Vince never uses the army cot again.

 _Age 7_

Vince is the only one outside the Murphy house who knows about Sam. He finds out on a Saturday night when he’s just brushed his teeth, still tasting mint when he walks into E’s room and sees him curled in bed clutching a chewed-up orange tiger. He’s pretending to be asleep, stiff as a board – but E could never pretend, and he pops open a wary eye when Vince settles in next to him.

“What’s that?” Vince asks.

“Sam,” E says flatly, eyes daring him to say anything. Up close, Sam is a dingy carpet-orange, and stuffing pokes out where an ear used to be.

“Hey Sam,” Vince says and turns on his side, flopping under the nubby covers. He can feel E’s arms relax, and later Vince only teases him about it when no one else is around to hear.

 _Age 8_

The afternoon E gets a black eye and an hour in detention, Vince waits on the school steps with the Little Prince script held down against the breeze with his sneakers. He’s mumbling the highlighted bits under his breath when the door bangs open behind him and two sets of feet clomp down to his side.

“Vince, this is Turtle,” E says, slapping the kid on the back like he’s a prize trophy. Vince’s eyebrows go up. Of course he knows it’s Turtle, they’ve been in the same class since the first grade. But they’ve never really talked, never been in the same homeroom, and now suddenly here’s E nudging the kid through their puffy winter jackets and grinning at him around the purple swell of his eye. Vince huffs out a cloud of white air as he stuffs the script back in his bag.

But when he gets up, Turtle hands Vince an unapologetic smile and a Pixie Stick - E’s teeth are already a little blue around the edges – and E tells him Turtle smuggled Mad Magazine into detention and shared under the desk. By the time they’re all at the dinner table and Turtle’s got even Mr. Murphy snorting out a short laugh – something Vince isn’t sure has ever happened before – Vince has to admit he likes the guy. But even so, later that night when Mrs. Murphy’s switched off the TV, changed E’s icepack and pointedly said “school night, boys,” Vince doesn’t relax until E pulls out the army cot and tells Turtle he’ll have to sleep downstairs.

 _Age 9_

Summer rolls in with a heat wave, and Vince spends most nights at the Murphy’s since Ricky never opens the windows and E gets dibs on the electric fan when there’s two of them sharing a room. Katie complains and sometimes steals it while they’re sleeping, but mostly E and Vince get to fall asleep to the fan’s muzzy hum and a steady breeze rustling the comic books scattered on the floor. Whenever Vince can’t sleep, he watches goosebumps pop up over E’s pale arms and the soft hair at the nape of his neck stir and ruffle. Sometimes he’ll reach over and just barely touch E’s arm, hair tickling his fingertips. E never wakes up.

 _Age 10_

They almost never stay at Vince’s, because three boys stacked in one narrow airless room is almost too much as it is. And as Rita says as she’s elbow deep in suds and dishwater, she loves Eric like her own but God only knows she doesn’t need another son.

But some days E has to get out, and when he does he comes to Vince. On nights when he opens the door and finds E on his front stoop, duffle bag in hand, Vince can usually hear some faint girly shrieking coming from next door – Katie’s friends, sleeping over. This particular night, E shows up mad as hell, with his hair mussed and the faint remains of raspberry lipstick smeared near his mouth. “She just grabbed me,” he near yells, stomping past Vince up the stairs. Vince blinks and follows, torn between laughter and awe. He kissed Sara Grossman once back stage, but she’s ten like them, in fifth grade. Katie’s friends are all thirteen, mysterious and distant worlds of nail polish, smooth hair and silver bangles.

He catches up to E in the bathroom, scrubbing at his face like he wants it to peel off. Vince nudges him in the ribs and leans against the sink.

“So?” he grins, raising his eyebrows.

“So what?” snaps E, and Vince gives him his best _don’t start_ look that he picked up from Ma. E rolls his eyes and shrugs, like he’s saying _girls, you know, gross,_ but Vince can’t tell if his face is so red because of the hand towel or if he’s blushing.

Later that night, when they’re crammed into the bottom bunk and E is flat on his face asleep, Vince chews on his thumb, staring at the pale crescent of E’s cheek and thinks about kissing.

 _Age 11_

E’s rolling up t-shirts and stuffing them in the gap under his door til the only light in the room comes from the buzzing orange streetlamp by his window. The window itself, it’s slowly creaking upwards as Vince and Turtle kneel on E’s bed and push at the frame, cold puffing through the widening crack. The edge of the screen is loose and they roll it up, sticking their heads out into the orangey-black September night. The bed squeaks as E joins them, jostling for space as he squeezes in, and they’re all grinning and bright-eyed when Turtle carefully pulls the joint from his pocket like it’s Gina Gershon on a platter.

Vince is the one with the lighter (slipped from a pair of jeans Ricky left on the floor), but E’s the one who lights it, frown-lines on his forehead lit as the flame pops up with a muted _whup_. The embers glow red and they cough through the first hot wool-scratchy breaths, thick sweet smoke mingling strangely with the dumpster-smell behind E’s house.

Turtle already knows how to blow smoke rings, and Vince leans out as far as he can to aim a puff through one of Turtle’s hoops. E’s arm is warm where he’s pressed against his side. Vince sags into him, and his eyelashes look huge before his eyes as they sweep the heavy air, and no, E is like a _furnace_ , hot elbow poking into Vince’s belly, and they’re all giggling quiet as they can.

The sound of a plate smashing breaks the steady whoosh of passing traffic – a dog barks, and Vince nearly knocks his head into Eric’s as he swings his head around. He blinks, the sound of rising voices pushing through like he’s underwater, until he untangles the noises and that’s his parents, their shouts only a little glass-muffled, like they’re right under E’s window and not behind a brick wall next door.

Vince stares at the blank wall across the way til his eyes burn. He’s staring so hard he doesn’t see E reaching for the window until someone tugs him back and the glass slams in front of his eyes, and bam, instant volume control, like a mute button on his life. Turtle only protests a little when E stubs out the joint, and after a beat even grabs the can and Lysols the air around them without E having to tell him. They breathe in lemon-smell and the half-quiet for a minute, not looking at each other, until Turtle stumbles off the bed into the army cot with an awkward pat on Vince’s shoulder and a mumbled “well, g’night, then.”

Vince sags into the pillow and E’s hand is on his shoulder, warm through the thin cotton of his t-shirt. He smells like lemon and cool air and pot and he’s right by Vince’s ear, voice quiet as he talks about last week’s basketball scores and Sarah Katz’s spandex shorts ripping in the middle of gym and the pros and cons of Caddyshack II, until the muffled shouting outside is just background noise to the warm breath and steady hum of E’s voice brushing his ear. That’s how Vince drifts off, asleep before E for the first time since they were six.

 _Age 12_

They’re a little old to still be sharing a bed, maybe, but when E brings it up Vince laughs and says maybe Eric hasn’t grown since he was six, but Vince _has_ and there’s no way he’ll fit on the cot – unless E wants him to sleep in Katie’s bed? That gets him a punch in the arm and a “that’s my sister, asshole,” but E’s smiling and doesn’t shove Vince off when he flings himself onto the screechy mattress.

The smile itself is unusual, something Vince hasn’t seen in – what’s today, the nineteenth? – four days. Vince watches him a moment before he pokes E in the cheek and says, “So you finally getting over her then?”

E blinks and stares at him like he’s got a third arm. “She dumped me, Vince. She dumped me on _Valentine’s Day_. What do you want me to do, skip around a May Pole?”

“I don’t know, E, maybe it wouldn’t kill you to celebrate some – I mean think about it, now you know she’s got bad taste, _and_ she’s not so smart. Breaking up on Valentine’s Day, the second-best present day of the year? No brains, definitely not girlfriend material.”

“Not funny, Vince.”

“Not trying to be funny. She dumps you, that means she’s not good enough for you.”

E pauses, shoots Vince an odd look. “Okay, genius, on planet Earth I think what that usually means is I’m the one not good enough for her.”

E’s trying hard to sound flip, but even with the lights out Vince can see a look in his eyes like he really means it, and it makes Vince want to take out Jessica’s kneecaps one at a time. It makes his teeth grind til he thinks they’ll break. But his voice comes out calm and he’s even grinning when he says, “Whatever man, she’s just a girl. Plenty of fish in the sea, right?”

“Yeah, and you’ve already taken a bite out of half of them,” E shoots back, but that little smile is back again, and it even almost reaches his eyes. When E closes them and turns his face into the pillow, Vince puts a hand on E’s back and leaves it there until the breaths under his fingers slow and even out. And in the morning, when E ends up curled under his arm, breath damp and head pressed in the crook of Vince’s neck, Vince still doesn’t let him go.

 _Age 13_

Sheryl Murphy sleeps on her side, so all he can see of her is the freckled back of her neck under her cropped head of hair. Vince feels fried, watching the sweat cool on her back. He ties up the condom and by some miracle it’s only half a mess, and holy hell Vince just had sex. And maybe, yeah, he’d had an inkling this would happen when Sheryl’d grabbed his hand and pulled him inside her Long Island house and up the stairs, but that doesn’t make him any less shell-shocked.

Voices drift through the sun-filtered curtains of her windows – Murphy family reunion still in full swing, and instead of guarding E from maiden aunts like he came to do, here’s Vince staring at the back of E’s cousin’s neck and feeling sticky. He reaches out to touch her but stops, suddenly getting a flash of how he must look lying there with his boxers round his ankles. Vince sits up fast. In under two minutes he’s re-clothed and rearranged but not ready to go just yet. It feels like there should be something more, some part of the whole process they didn’t cover, something key that should make Vince feel new and invincible and different. He stands over Sheryl, feeling lost, and the only thing he can think of to do is pull the thin sheet higher over her shoulder.

The screen door bangs open downstairs and that’s E’s voice calling his name. Vince thuds down the stairs, shrugs at E’s “well where the hell were _you_?”, and says, “Bathroom.”

Eric looks harried and mutters “long damn bathroom break.” He’s so familiar and pissy and E that more than anything Vince wants to tell him how it took him two entire minutes to unhook her bra, and how she turned her head and hissed when his hips jerked in the first time, and how his elbow slipped halfway through and he almost crushed her. But he cuts the words off as they rise in his throat and instead claps E on the shoulder and says, “C’mon, if you’re gonna open your mouth to whine, might as well stick some food in there too.”

Sheryl reappears five minutes later, looking pink and sheepish and ruffled against the screen door. Her blue eyes seek him out and she gives him a knowing smile across the yard, but even though he smiles back he doesn’t talk to her the rest of the afternoon. Vince lies easy as breathing, but he doesn’t lie to E.

 _Age 14_

Johnny comes home to visit and takes them out to see Point Break, sitting up and spilling popcorn whenever his face looms up in the screen. Gives Vince a start to see Johnny’s face magnified like that, even if it’s only two seconds a go, and when it’s over they all agree he’s the best stoned surfer ever to grace the silver screen. Turtle stays behind when Johnny stations himself at the theater entrance pushing autographs on the unsuspecting public (“he’s a fucking movie star, man, he’s like a free ticket to an all-you-can-eat fangirl buffet”), but E and Vince slip off.

They get Slushees even though it’s October and their hands are numb by the time they get to Forest Park. It’s quiet and pitch dark under the trees – definitely not their safest idea ever – but seeing Johnny on the big screen makes Vince restless. The trees, at least, are a change of scene.

The path they’re on leads them straight to the carousel, looking like something out of a horror movie the way it looms out of the woods in a circle of orange light. They jump the fence and E climbs his usual horse, propping his feet on its tail and picking at the paint as Vince talks from the back of a lion. He just lets his mouth go, spinning pipe dreams, and E laughs and shoots them all down as he goes.

Vince trails off after a while and listens to the car-sounds filter through the trees. E’s hair looks metallic under the light. “E. You know I’m going to L.A. eventually.”

The quick look E gives him shows he’s heard the change in Vince’s tone. His face softens. “Yeah, Vince. I know.”

Vince flashes his shark-tooth grin and stretches, preening. “Think I’ll make it?”

E kicks his shin with the toe of his ratty Keds. “Don’t give me that bullshit. If Johnny can get there, my left knee can make it big in Hollywood.”

The tone is classic blunt E, but he’s got a rare look on his face, eyes warm and focused. They’re blue as blue in his pale face and don’t waver when Vince stares back, and something sharp and hot twists in his gut. All those hours spent in front of the mirror practicing not blushing go down the tube and he feels his face heat up. But he plays it cool, grins, says “what’s this, sarcasm? Don’t sell your knees short, E, they might hear you and get offended,” and he feels a little sick.

E says “you’re insane, you know that?” and that’s that, conversation closed. Vince wakes up frozen the next morning, face pressed into the splintery side of the sleigh carousel car, the guy who runs the place yelling and shaking the fence. E grabs Vince by the collar and they stumble off through the wet morning air, laughing, and Vince thinks if he can just concentrate hard enough on running, he can forget he just realized he’s in love with his best friend.

 _Age 15_

Sophomore year E starts grinding his teeth. Or maybe he’s done it all along, but Vince’d never been awake to hear it. Now, at four o-fucking-clock in the goddamn morning, smashed against the wall as far from E as he can get without tunneling through, Vince hears every creak of his teeth, sawing away like E’s trying to chew off his own mouth.

This time last year, Vince’d think nothing of reaching over, smoothing out the stress in E’s back. But it’s not last year and Vince wants to wrap himself around his best male friend like a goddamn octopus so bad he’s aching for it. The crook at the back of E’s neck looks like it’s made for Vince’s cheek and he can feel the slow heat where Eric’s arm is draped near his. Vince is sweating and so hard it _hurts_ and E’s just lying there, teeth grinding away, like he’s a tuning fork picking up the waves of Vince’s frustration.

Self-control has never been Vince’s strong point. Almost shaking, he grits his teeth and palms his dick, staring at the ceiling til his eyes start to water, imagines thumbing E’s jaw, rolling him over, kissing away the stress until E gasps and comes and melts into slack-jawed sleep.

Just like every other night he’s slept at the Murphy’s for the past year, the light’s turned a faint dishwater-gray under the blinds before he falls asleep, face pressed into the wall. The pipes are rattling with water in the bathroom when he wakes up and the bed is empty, and Vince stares exhausted at the dull green wallpaper inches away from his face, wondering when he became such a masochist.

 _Age 16_

“C’mon, let me see,” Vince wheedles, reaching for the neat white bandage taped to E’s chest. E absently swats his hand away, not looking away from the mirror where he’s standing shirtless and skeptical.

“Seriously E, it’s been, like, four hours already.”

“It’s been one and a half, moron, George said leave it on two _at least_.” It’s funny, the way E enunciates especially clear when he’s smashed, like he can trick the world if he just pops his ts. Never mind it’s three in the morning, they just fell twice coming up the stairs and E’s talking like he’s at a basketball game.

“But I want to see,” Vince says, teetering dangerously into whining. He reaches out again, trying for stealth, but this time E takes his hand and pins it down. Takes two tries, but he does it.

“You seriously want me to get infected on my birthday?”

“You’re seriously not even going to tell me what you got?”

“Not my fault needles make you hurl. Jesus, Vince, it’s not even that interesting, it’s just a fucking clover.”

“A clover? Oh, right, because you really need to be more Irish.”

“Yeah, well fuck you.” E’s eyes are back on the bathroom mirror, hand hovering over the white gauze, fingers twitching and forehead creased. Vince rolls his eyes, unfolds from his perch on top of the toilet.

“Look at you, like you’re not dying to see it too,” and this time E just watches, blurry eyed and nervous, when Vince stands behind him and reaches round his shoulders to peel back the top strip of tape. He can feel E’s breath catch when the tape sticks to chest hair and it makes Vince feel wild and hot and reckless.

The skin under the gauze is a mottled red-white, raised where the black ink curves through a down of red-blonde hair. Against Vince’s chest, E feels like he’s stopped breathing, and when Vince looks up at the mirror E isn’t looking at the tattoo.

“Looks good,” Vince manages, and he is a fucking pro, voice level like he’s not practically spooning his best friend in the bathroom. E clears his throat and twists out of Vince’s grip, turns on the tap. The water’s loud. He says: “Yeah, dried blood and pus is a real good look on me,” and Vince laughs.

Mrs. Murphy’s mixing bowl is dumped in the sink and sloshily filled with lukewarm water and pearly traces of Dial. E’s t-shirt is lying crumpled on the counter –Vince grabs it, dunks it in before E can protest. Vince hears himself say “let me,” quiet as a thought, and E’s hand stops short where he’s reaching to yank his shirt back. And that’s all it takes, E’s eyes staring huge and blue as he slowly eases back against the wall.

“All right,” he says softly, hissing through his teeth when Vince slowly dabs over the ‘l’ in ‘lucky.’ The house is quiet enough they can hear Mr. Murphy breathing down the hall, but the blood is rushing in Vince’s ears and he’s flying, cushioned in a haze of alcohol that muffles the voices that’ve been saying bad idea for the past two years. Eric’s beer-breath puffs warm and abrupt on his cheek and Vince can feel the stuttered thump of E’s heart against his fingers, and the need to touch, envelop the soft breathing heat of E thickens and pulls at the air between them until the ink, blood and water blur before Vince’s eyes.

He’s about to do something drastic, probably a ten-year-friendship-killing something, when E’s hand clamps on his wrist and holds him still. E clears his throat. “Thanks,” he says, still weirdly quiet, and he doesn’t meet Vince’s eyes as he pulls away.

This whole unrequited thing, Vince thinks for the thousandth time, it sucks.

Vince half-heartedly brushes his teeth when E stumbles back to his room, and by the time he’s done E’s taped on a new bandage with the same roll of tape that’s keeping his desk lamp together. He’s sprawled on his back, relaxed like he only is when he’s smashed, and Vince mutters a ‘hey, happy birthday, man’ before he crawls in and presses his face to the wall. And he would have stayed there, hard and frustrated and sulking, except E keeps trying to turn on his stomach. Every time, there’s a creak of springs and then a pained hiss and a ‘ _fuck_.'

This goes on and off for maybe an hour til Vince gets crazy enough to turn, say “Jesus, just relax, will you?” and drape himself half over E where he’s lying on his back. E freezes and Vince can feel the tension all down his body. Makes Vince feel like a sleazy bodice-ripper from one of his sister’s pulps. But he just squirms closer and says, “I gotta get some sleep, E, and I can’t do that with this festival of pain you’ve got going on.”

“What’re you, a human seatbelt?” E grumps, but his words are breathy and stilted, and even in the half-light Vince can see the stain of a blush creep over his neck. It stops Vince short. When he looks up, E’s staring straight at him, eyes wide and maybe a little desperate, and if it’s Vince’s job to read people, _how_ has he not noticed this before?

He says, “Eric,” and like that E’s hand is up the back of his shirt and their teeth click together and E’s stubble is scraping his jaw. The kiss is messy and harsh and so bone-achingly good Vince can barely see. He gropes blindly for E’s cheek, fists the back of his neck and goes deeper, and E’s iron-brand hands dig in his ribs. Someone’s making choked noises, low enough it feels like a groan, and something hot and wild rattles loose in Vince’s chest when E bites down on his lip and he can feel it down to his toes.

And then E’s pulling back and Vince is gulping humid air, and beneath him his best friend is gasping and dazed. He blinks, brushes fingertips over Vince’s eyebrow like he’s made of cobwebs, says “happy fucking birthday indeed.” Vince snorts a laugh into the sweat-slick hollow of E’s throat, curls around him like this is something they’ve been doing their whole lives, and that’s how they fall asleep – Eric on his back, and Vince, his human safety belt.

 

(End)


End file.
